Beyond the crabgrass frontier: industry and the spread of North American cities, 1850–1950

The conventional story of suburbanization in Canada and the United States portrays an outward movement of residences from the cities that only since World War II has been fuelled by the dispersal of employment to the urban fringe. This prevailing wisdom needs considerable revision. In this essay we present a theoretical interpretation of industrial suburbanization. We argue that the outward spread of factories and manuÍfacturing districts has been a distinctive and important feature of North American urbanization since the middle of the nineteenth century. The paper begins with a discussion of how industrial decentralization has been repeatedly misinterpreted as new and unprecedented, rather than an extension of past trends. In contrast to the prevailing interpretation, we claim that industrial suburbanization is the product of a combination of the economic logic of geographical industrialization, investment in real estate, and political guidance by business and government leaders. The result has been extensive, multinodal metropolitan regions.     

Canadian and American Treatment of the Nikkei, 1890–1949: A Comparison

For many Japanese people, the 49th parallel was only a line on a map, yet there were differences for the Japanese residents in the United States and Canada. The two nations had different concepts of citizenship and constitutions but, in what has been called “hemispheric orientalism,” prejudice knew no border. Both countries severely restricted immigration from Japan. In the United States, immigrants, the Issei, were aliens ineligible for citizenship. Thus, states could deny their access to commercial fishing and the right to own or lease land. Because the American constitution bestows full citizenship on the native-born, their American-born children, the Nisei, could vote and acquire land, but experienced discrimination especially in employment. On paper, the Canadian Issei had more civil rights since they could become naturalized but this provided few advantages apart from the rights to own land and to fish commercially. The Canadian Nisei had no more rights than their parents. In British Columbia, where 95 percent of the Japanese lived, they could not vote and provincial laws and customs denied their access to many occupations. During the Second World War, both nations required all the Nikkei to leave the Pacific Coast, incarcerated some, severely restricted the mobility of others, and proposed to “repatriate” many of them to Japan. Drawing mainly on the previous scholarship which has examined specific themes, time periods, or comparisons, this article offers an overview of how between the 1890s and the 1940s the effects of prejudice varied more in detail and timing than in principle even though formal consultation between the two nations was sporadic.     

Personalities and Institutions in Americanist Archaeology, 1850–1950

Between 1850 and 1950 Americanist archaeology evolved from an inchoate blend of antiquarianism, literature, and field digging undertaken by untrained but enthusiastic amateurs into an increasingly disciplined and institutionalized field of inquiry. While personal speculation and style became less pronounced, institutional (university/museum) support provided financial grounds for long-term research and teaching agendas. At the same time, while institutionalized archaeology certainly did not eliminate strong personality differences and professional disagreements, it did provide channels within which to confront and resolve them. The overlapping generations of Ephraim Squier, Alfred Maudslay, and Byron Cummings clearly demonstrate this trajectory of professionalization.     

American Images of Canada: Canadian Muslims in US Newspapers, 1999–2014

How do American news media portray Canadian Muslims? Using a sample of 386 discrete newspaper articles published between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2014, in The Buffalo News, Tampa Bay Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today, this article investigates the portrayal of Canadian Muslims in these publications through a combination of content and discourse analyses. Three findings stand out: first, the overall tone of the coverage was neutral or ambiguous rather than either systematically positive or systematically negative; second, a tendency to construct Muslims as social outsiders was common even in articles coded as positive; third, the Canadian Muslim experience was viewed through the prism of discourses on American exceptionalism, and above all the idea that assimilation always trumps multiculturalism.     

Industrial Building Design and Economic Context: The Railway Freighthouse in Chicago, 1850–1925

Abstract

The rapidly increasing scale and broadening scope of railway freight operations in Chicago between 1850 and 1925 offer a unique opportunity to study the impact of factors affecting North American freighthouse design. Early freighthouses were small, single-storey brick and mill buildings designed to handle the straightforward exchange of freight shipments, while later freighthouses were large, multi-storey, concrete and steel structures featuring mechanised freight handling systems. A simple analytical framework for studying factors influential in freighthouse size, function and design is provided. Market factors include developments in the railway freight marketplace, notably freight traffic growth and the need to offer storage and warehousing services. Supply factors include those factors that limited or facilitated changes in design resulting from changes in the marketplace, notably local freight delivery costs, increases in land values, advances in construction materials and labour-saving freight handling technologies.     

Industry builds the city: the suburbanization of manufacturing in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1850–1940

The San Francisco Bay Area demonstrates how industrial dispersal had created the sprawling form of the American metropolis. Neither change in transport modes nor residential suburbanization is principally responsible for shaping the outward spiral of urbanization. Manufacturing began its outward march from the outset of the city's industrialization, establishing peripheral nodes of employment and working class residence within San Francisco, then beyond the city limits in South San Francisco and especially the East Bay. The main cause of decentralization has been industrial shifts; the outbreak of new activities in new places, normally in the form of industrial districts at various spatial scales. A second cause has been the orchestration of development by business leaders through property ownership and political manoeuvring guided by a general vision of metropolitan expansion, whether in co-operation or competition with one another.     

Living in the Industrial City: Housing Quality,Land Ownership and the Archaeological Evidence from Industrial Manchester, 1740–1850

This paper looks at the recent archaeological evidence for industrial housing in Manchester, United Kingdom. The paper argues that a fragmented land-holding pattern developed in a number of city-centre areas during the second half of the eighteenth century. This land-holding pattern gave rise to overcrowding as a result of the domestic redevelopment of back yard plots and the conversion of older housing to tenements. This redevelopment was at its most acute during the peak decades of population growth in the city, 1800–40, and this led to the conditions of poverty, disease, and overcrowding recorded in contemporary accounts from the mid-nineteenth century.     

Guest Editorial: Does Anglophone hegemony permeate Gender,Place and Culture?

This editorial is seen as a comment on the on-going concern expressed in several Anglophone geography journals about the hegemony of Angloamerican production and its role in formulating the terms of international academic debate. We examine the extent to which Angloamerican dominance is equally true with regard to feminist geography, by looking at how/whether Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) deals with this bias. Finally we forward some suggestions for positive action towards enhancing the international character of the journal.

¿La hegemonía Anglosajona impregna Gender, Place and Culture?

Esta nota editorial trata de un tema que en la actualidad es motivo de preocupación en algunas revistas anglosajonas, la hegemonía de la producción anglosajona en geografía y su papel crucial en la formulación de los debates académicos internacionales. A través del anàlisis de la revista Gender Place and Culture, se discute cómo esta situación se da también en la geografía feminista. Finalmente, se proponen una serie de acciones positivas para potenciar el carácter internacional de la revista.